FBI joins efforts to rescue U.S. ship captain

AP Photo/Maersk Line, fileThis undated image made available by Maersk Line, shows the 17,000-ton container ship Maersk Alabama, when it was operating under the name Maersk Alva, which had been hijacked by Somalia pirates while sailing from Salalah in Oman to the Kenyan port of Mombassa via Djibouti.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Navy summoned the FBI in crisis atmosphere Thursday for advice on how to rescue a cargo ship captain held hostage in the Indian Ocean by pirates who seized his vessel off the coast of Somalia.

At the same time, the shipping company Maersk demanded that Capt. Richard Phillips be returned and called his safety its No. 1 priority. The Obama administration, for its part, weighed options in an incident at sea that dramatized the limits of U.S. military power in international cops-and-robbers scenarios.

At the FBI, spokesman Richard Kolko described the bureau's hostage rescue team as "fully engaged" with the military in strategizing ways to retrieve the ship's captain and secure the Maersk Alabama and its roughly 20-person U.S. crew.

The FBI was summoned as the Pentagon substantially stepped up its monitoring of the hostage standoff, sending in P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft and other equipment and securing video footage of the scene.

Defense Department officials would not say Thursday morning just how close the USS Bainbridge was to a small lifeboat where Phillips was being held near the Maersk Alabama.

But one official, speaking on grounds of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said the pirates "could see it with their eyes." Another official said there were several other vessels in the vicinity, but it was unclear whether any were the so-called "mother ship" that pirates use to drop them at hijacking sites.

The pirates were still holding the 55-year-old Phillips, from Underwood, Vt., after the American crew retook the ship Wednesday and the hostage-takers fled into the lifeboat. Hostage negotiators and military officials have been working around the clock to free Phillips.

In his statement, Kolko said: "FBI negotiators stationed at Quantico (Va.) have been called by the Navy to assist with negotiations with the Somali pirates and are fully engaged in this matter."

In Norfolk, Va., home of the shipping company, spokesman Kevin Speers told reporters early Thursday that "the most recent contact" that Maersk had with the ship indicated that Phillips remained in the hands of the pirates.

Speers said the company is "grateful" for the assistance of the government and the military and said it is doing all it can to cooperate.